Written by

Maureen Wallenfang

Post-Crescent Media

Happy Joe’s has closed. The restaurant was at 3401 E. Evergreen Drive, across from the USA Youth Sports Complex on Appleton’s north side.

A sign on its door thanks customers for past patronage and says Happy Joe’s of Green Bay will accept all gift certificates.

“I did permanently close Happy Joe’s,” confirmed Kerry Gasman, one of four partners reached today.

The $1.5 million restaurant was opened in 2009 by Rick and Kerry Gasman and Frank and Terri Hanold. The Hanolds continue to operate the Green Bay Happy Joe’s at 1675 E. Mason St.

Gasman said in May they planned to change the Appleton Happy Joe’s into Finley’s, an independent concept that would have kept its family friendly nature while upping its appeal for more mature customers and business professionals in nearby offices. Families didn’t dine out on weeknights during the school year and they wanted to boost weekday business. They planned to offer more healthy food choices alongside pizza, and they removed the arcade room.

But they ended up pulling the plug on Finley’s as well.

“The biggest problem we had was that the capital injection to turn into Finley’s may or may not have been successful. You don’t know if you’re going to bring in the guests or not,” Gasman said. “It would have taken a couple hundred thousand dollars. It was a tough decision to take the risk or not. We opted not to.”

Multiple roundabouts on their stretch of Evergreen, between Ballard and French roads, added to the restaurant’s problems by making the stretch cumbersome and reducing drive-by traffic.

“People avoid Evergreen Drive. They take JJ or Northland,” she said. “It was a big mistake to put four roundabouts on one mile. We joked that the kids were carsick by the time they got to us.”

The serious side of it, she said was that “roundabouts really hurt us.”